Slash or abolish food stamps and then make fun of (or pretend not to notice) tens of millions of impoverished Americans as they beg and grovel for charity all day?

Eliminate long-term unemployment benefits and then condescendingly lecture the unemployed for not being able to find jobs that don't exist?

Allow corporations to pay American workers the same slave wages they pay workers in China?

Shut off the so-called "printing press," and thereby drive that much more of a wedge between the overall indebtedness of the economy (principal-plus-interest) and the amount of money (principal) there is in circulation to pay it off?

Economic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention. But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too.

The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation. Those are the figures for a household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased substantially.

The Russell Sage study also examined net worth at the 95th percentile. (For households at that level, 94 percent of the population had less wealth and 4 percent had more.) It found that for this well-do-do slice of the population, household net worth increased 14 percent over the same 10 years. Other research, by economists like Edward Wolff at New York University, has shown even greater gains in wealth for the richest 1 percent of households.

For households at the median level of net worth, much of the damage has occurred since the start of the last recession in 2007. Until then, net worth had been rising for the typical household, although at a slower pace than for households in higher wealth brackets. But much of the gain for many typical households came from the rising value of their homes. Exclude that housing wealth and the picture is worse: Median net worth began to decline even earlier.

“The housing bubble basically hid a trend of declining financial wealth at the median that began in 2001,” said Fabian T. Pfeffer, the University of Michigan professor who is lead author of the Russell Sage Foundation study.

The reasons for these declines are complex and controversial, but one point seems clear:

When only a few people are winning and more than half the population is losing, surely something is amiss.

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

… I was in a thrift store the other day (National chain ~ SAVERS) andheard an announcement on the PA, that all forms of payment, " … areaccepted - cash, credit cards, ATM and EBT."

EBT? There is NO food sold at this place. WTF?

Is this common?

Yes its common. But its not supposed to happen at all.

You can now get alcohol, cigarettes, gasoline, and anything else you want with EBT. Lots of places are accepting as a form of payment. I've heard stories that some have figured out how to transfer from card to card and are using it for things like drugs and illegal weapons.

I say all EBT and welfare should be cut off completely, because its a total waste of taxpayers money. Too many are mooching off the system and running everything into the ground.

You can now get alcohol, cigarettes, gasoline, and anything else you want with EBT. Lots of places are accepting as a form of payment. I've heard stories that some have figured out how to transfer from card to card and are using it for things like drugs and illegal weapons.

I say all EBT and welfare should be cut off completely, because its a total waste of taxpayers money. Too many are mooching off the system and running everything into the ground.

… looks like it has become a "Guranteed Income" instead of an emergency food safety net … not good.

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St. Augustine: “The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."

We are without industry... our food production is corporate owned, and poisoned... we've been called consumers since '79, cattle at the trough... all wealth we have created in 200+ years is now offshore... any kid who shows his classmates something he learned from his grandfather... how to add a column of numbers using a pencil and paper... is chastised by the teacher for not using a calculator... where whatever the president says is seen as the absolute the truth, yet truth is a lie... yeah... we're in a recovery all right...(not)... Minimum-wage, chemically induced, autistic, SNAP slaves-R-us.

JTCoyoté

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ~C.S. Lewis

109,631,000 Americans lived in households that received benefits from one or more federally funded "means-tested programs" — also known as welfare — as of the fourth quarter of 2012, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau.

The Census Bureau has not yet reported how many were on welfare in 2013 or the first two quarters of 2014.

But the 109,631,000 living in households taking federal welfare benefits as of the end of 2012, according to the Census Bureau, equaled 35.4 percent of all 309,467,000 people living in the United States at that time

...153,323,000 people were getting federal benefits of some type at the end of 2012

...

What did taxpayers give to the 109,631,000 — the 35.4 percent of the nation — getting welfare benefits at the end of 2012?

82,679,000 of the welfare-takers lived in households where people were on Medicaid, said the Census Bureau. 51,471,000 were in households on food stamps. 22,526,000 were in the Women, Infants and Children program. 20,355,000 were in household on Supplemental Security Income. 13,267,000 lived in public housing or got housing subsidies. 5,442,000 got Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. 4,517,000 received other forms of federal cash assistance.

How do you put in perspective the 109,631,000 people taking welfare, or the 150,026,000 getting some type of federal benefit other than veterans' benefits?

Well, the CIA World Factbook says there are 142,470,272 people in Russia. So, the 150,026,000 people getting non-veterans federal benefits in the United States at the end of 2012 outnumbered all the people in Russia.

...

In the fourth quarter of 2008, when President Obama was elected, there were 96,197,000 people living in households taking benefits from one or more federal welfare programs. After four years, by the fourth quarter of 2012, that had grown by 13,434,000.

Those 13,434,000 additional people on welfare outnumbered the 12,882,135 people the Census Bureau estimated lived in Obama's home state of Illinois in 2013

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Food stamps..Welfare. Firstly, hunger truly suks.. Many folks are up the proverbial creek and need assistance, I say help them. There are also others who stuck in the system, raised in it, nurtured to accept this as a way of life. Lastly there are people on the suk train, fraudulent. I worked on Mission hill, Boston. My main station was the welly office. I met people who would have done anything to have a job and get on their feet, folks who truly needed it. Those who had been born & raised in the system, indoctrinated. Lastly folks who fraudulently used the system.. I asked the director how could they weed out the suckbags from those who truly needed assistance, he said , "Are you serious or shi**tting me, we get about .02% of the frauds". They can bail out banks $$$, corporations $$, have multiple wars$$, etc....17 trillion and counting, in the end, welfare has little to do with it. As for the suckbags, scons using the system without the need -remind me of the millionares club running this land. PS: Didn't they just vote in a pay raise ? (congress) as if they needed one!

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee talk about the technological advancements that have taken over our lives and our economy and suggest ways to harness those advancements to benefit society. The co-authors spoke at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Gwyneth Paltrow confessed in her Goop newsletter Thursday that she cheated on her $29 Food Stamp Challenge after only four days.

The 42-year-old actress accepted a challenge from celebrity chef Mario Batali last Thursday in which she was asked to survive on $29 worth of food for the duration of one week.

“This is what $29 gets you at the grocery store–what families on SNAP (i.e., food stamps) have to live on for a week,” she tweeted at the time. “We’re walking in their shoes to see how far we get.”

...

The new story goes something like this, via Gwyneth Paltrow:

As I suspected, we only made it through about four days, when I personally broke and had some chicken and fresh vegetables ( and in full transparency, half a bag of black licorice).

My perspective has been forever altered by how difficult it was to eat wholesome, nutritious food on that budget, even for just a few days-a challenge that 47 million Americans face every day, week, and year.

After trying to complete this challenge (I would give myself a C-), I am even more outraged that there is still not equal pay in the workplace....

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

The number of beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, has exceeded 45 million for 48 straight months, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA)....

The number of food stamp recipients first exceeded 45 million in May 2011. Since then, the number has consistently exceeded 45 million, hitting a record high of about 47,800,000 in December 2012.

In April 2015, households on food stamps received an average benefit of $256.93, and total benefits for the month cost taxpayers $5.7 billion.

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

In April 2015, households on food stamps received an average benefit of $256.93, and total benefits for the month cost taxpayers $5.7 billion.

The last estimate is that the federal government spends $11 billion dollars a day---including weekends.

So SNAP benefits do not even account for one day in a 365 day year of what the government spends.

The tragedy is that some of these people want jobs or better jobs and they are not there.

I'm with Tarpley on this one---feed the people and TO HELL WITH THE BANKERS.

THE REAL BIG SUMS OF MONEY IN THIS COUNTRY ARE SPENT BY THE BANKERS---QE---WE DON'T EVEN KNOW IF IT IS STILL GOING ON---IN IT'S PRIME THE BANKERS WERE TAKING (STEALING)$85 BILLION A MONTH FROM THE PEOPLE. So SNAP is pocket change. THESE SAME CRIMINAL BANKERS BORROW (STEAL) AT 0% INTEREST FROM THE FED AND CHARGE POORER PEOPLE 20 TO 30% FOR CREDIT CARDS.

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I'M A DEPLORABLE KNUCKLEHEAD THAT SUPPORTS PRESIDENT TRUMP. MAY GOD BLESS HIM AND KEEP HIM SAFE.

Despite the unemployment rate being at an eight-year low (4.9 percent as of January 2016), the number of people on food stamps remains near an all-time high which was 47,636,000 in 2013.

Why the disparity in the numbers? Well, the unemployment rate does not take into account people who are not in, or have dropped out of, the workforce altogether.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January of this year that approximately 94 million Americans are not participating in the workforce.

But the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been hovering around 46 million participants since 2011. The current figure, as of February 2016, stands at 45.8 million Americans receiving food stamps.....

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5